Hindurobics

30 hours on two planes. There was a 15 minutes break from crampy, knee-hugging seating postures where we ran, full speed, through London's Heathrow International Maze of Never-ending Hallways. I didn't have my shoes on because I had to push my way through customs and the time was just that close (after two months in India, where lines for anything are non-existent, I am a premiere pusher). Running, sock-footed, on the moving escalator-style walkways. Using my arms to push forward on my back-pack straps so the load behind me wouldn't jostle and slam against my scoliosised airplane spine. I wonder how long it takes the muscles to atrophy. My legs are still throbbing and in the real world I'm a disciplined runner. Once in Jodphur I even had the inclination to strip down naked in my marble-floored hotel room and jog-in-place in the rank heat of the humid room until the cold water in the shower wouldn't matter any more.

I had also hiked through the tea and cardamom fields of Vagamon. Impossible hilled country side arranged like a blown-up microchip with Green crops of tea and spice. You can't even find that town on the gigantic map of India I brought to my mom so she could place me over the months. The ground jagged up at 80 degree hills that I visually measured to be 250 cows high (from the one I could see grazing in the distance you could fit a stack of 10 on my pinky nail). The sun in the high elevation was ruthless. It reddened my head and neck into my first and only sun-burn during the entire two months in the desert, on the beaches of the Arabian sea and along the riverbanks and rice paddies of the Southern Jungle.

Constantly, there were stairs. In the City of the Dead the red stoned steps climbed at anything but a straight line. The individual steps felt like they were devised to consent only to the stride of a crippled limper with one leg three inches shorter than the other carrying a pile of driftwood and rotted boat planks on his head towards the burning ghats to incinerate his deceased. He is not out of breath. He is chanting.

Every open sewer system is a teeter-totter of concrete slabs hovering over a million peoples worth of daily waste products. Every step feels like a dangerous gamble as each sheet of rock and mortor slides under your weight and shifts to a new position one foot above the sound of flowing septis. You can feel the inevitability that if your foot went through your shoe and sock would wet warm with the seeping matter that would cause immediate insanity, hepatitis, incontinence and infection upon contact.

Walking, climbing, running weighed down by two months worth of backpacked lifestyle in the Heat.

I think what some people mistake as a spiritual Asian vibe of mystic self-discovery is really just the palpable, throbbing energy of two billion peoples' tearing thigh muscles reveberating in waves across the landscape and ringing your pelvic bone like an ivory forked tuning key.

*

The luggage is untracked as of two minutes ago. Three days and the airline still hasn't even gotten to the step of running the computerized tracker over the coded tag to see where the bags are coming from and going to. I couldn't even imagine the mountain of unchecked luggage at the airport right now. It must be thousands of bags, maybe more. Somewhere in that pile are my belongings.

At least I'm no longer living out of a suitcase.

Clocking Out!

Two straight weeks of drawing here at the Residency. Sitting in front of the tv watching the one bad English channel and cramping up my hand into a massive knot.



First it's the out line of the siloutte after figuring out where all the overlaps will be.



Then about two hours later it's filled in. It takes two hours because you have to constantly move around and change directions so that the paper doesn't get too wet in any one spot and buckle. It also gives the black a nice velvety look that the silkscreens don't have.



Then about two more hours of filling in the overlaps with the most even, light pencil layer you could imagine. It's harder than you would think to do a wide flat grey with a mechanical pencil. It's usually harder than I would think too.




Then I do this really time-consuming faded line around the clear shapes. When they are done, the inside white of the clear shapes looks like a completely different white than the white of the paper. Who likes optic tricks?


I got six done that I like and will take home with me. They are already packed and safe to go. Frames are in the mail and they go up in the gallery in Febuary or May or something like that. I'm getting pretty good at deadlines. Who's all grown up?



I probably did another six that all, somehow or another, got buffooned-up and abandoned, either right before or after they were done.



Melissa engraved 8 woodblocks.



Her inspiration was rupees and victorian table-setting charts.











hese are a bit larger.









Now it's time for the "vacation" part of our trip. We fly south after two nights in Kolkata for some good beachy relaxation. We may not have too much internet connection, so if I don't get another chance, have a good holiday.

Come to Matty

Whenever I get a little homesick, this makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside: